Personics!

Make your own mixtape! If you're in 1988:

You know the situation. You're talking with a friend about the records he or she just bought and you're thinking, "I'd like to tape some of those songs." But what if you could go into a record store, select the songs you like and leave with a tape that includes all of them?

That's the idea behind the Personics Co. of Menlo Park, Calif., which debuted its system last week in 25 Los Angeles-area record stores. Customers can flip through a catalog of 2,500 songs on the system's optical-disc computer system, fill out a form, and presto - within five minutes, the record-store clerk hands you a custom-made compilation on a TDK cassette.

And there was even an ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPJemnDK3FY

All this prompted by Twitter talk tonight, of course.

i never made one of these, but i remember seeing the machine at the mall, probably at the sam goody.

Wow that brings back some memories.... these were everywhere for, like one summer in the '90s and then disappeared. It printed a neat silver-and-turquoise liner with the track listing. You could even give your mixtape a name, and dedicate it to someone.

"Made by the Personics system especially for"
(name of your crush-tape recipient here)

"Title"
(your mixtape name)

The songs cost from about 35 cents to about $1.50 depending on what you chose from what back then seemed like an immensely vast catalog, so the tape would cost about the same as a normal CD. I wondered if some songs were cheap because of easier licensing, or because they were just crappy songs that nobody would otherwise put on a mixtape.

they were around from 1988 to 1991. they went out of business primarily because of licensing difficulties.

Yeah, I recall this being "jumped on"

I know I've still got one of these in a box somewhere, I'm going to have to dredge it up this weekend and laugh at the tracklist. I remember the songlist binder, chock full of nonsense I was afraid to spend 75 cents on to find out if they were as insufferable as the names implied (Sailcat! Beat Farmers! Sugarloaf!), and you know it's been 20 years and you can have an earful for free at the drop of a hat and I still do not give a shit about hearing Sailcat. There was a lot of blank tape at the end of each side, that's how I learned about covering the erase tabs from a friend.

I've got one too, somewhere. I think I chose all of the metal songs that were available and maybe a punk song or two? Red Hot Chili Peppers, probably, it was during that year of my life.

It seemed tremendously exciting to teenaged me, but then I realized I could just trade mixtapes with other people for free (or a couple of stamps) and get better music.

"It's a fully personalized product," says company founder Charles Garvin. ''If you want heavy metal songs, for instance, you can add phaser sound effects between songs. It's fully customized."

Because, you know, heavy metal.